Death Behind Bars: After Officials Denied Her Medical Care, Keskea Hernandez Died Handcuffed to a Bed

The photos atop Keskea Hernandez's casket showed a pretty Dominican woman with caramel skin, a brilliant smile, and a cascade of expensively cut hair. As religious hymns drifted across the lavender carpet at Boyd's Funeral Home in Pembroke Pines last month, family members rose one by one to describe Hernandez as a vibrant and energetic go-getter. But the frail body in the box full of white roses told a different, much darker tale.

Seventeen months in federal prison for mortgage fraud had taken a visible toll on Hernandez. Her hair, garlanded with flowers, was now brittle and sparse. Her skin was pale and splotchy. And underneath her white dress, Hernandez's chest was uneven from where doctors had removed an infected breast implant just before she died on January 9, alone and handcuffed to a hospital bed.

"My baby," moaned Elsa Peña Nadal, as she collapsed atop her daughter's corpse. "What have they done to my baby?"

Michael E. Miller

Elsa Peña Nadal holds a picture of her daugher, Keskea Hernandez.

Courtesy of the Hernandez Family

Keskea Hernandez

The story of how Hernandez, a 42-year-old real estate agent, ended up dead in federal custody has never before been reported. Officials at the Miami Federal Detention Center where she was imprisoned for mortgage fraud have refused to comment. But interviews and documents obtained by New Times reveal that Hernandez's death was preventable — perhaps even criminally so.

For more than a year, Hernandez had begged for treatment for lupus, an incurable autoimmune disorder that causes pain, swollen joints, and digestive problems. If untreated, it can have deadly effects on the heart, lungs, and kidneys. But doctors, judges, and the warden all ignored Hernandez. Instead of giving her the food and medications she needed, they pumped her full of steroids that ultimately made her condition worse. When she pleaded for an early release or transfer to another facility last June, the FDC's medical director said she was "embellishing" her illness. Six months later, Hernandez was dead.

"They killed my one and only daughter," says Peña Nadal.

The scandal goes deeper than Hernandez's tragic death, however. Of FDC Miami 1,500 inmates, two others passed away last year (one from suicide). Nationwide, 383 out of roughly 218,000 federal prison inmates died in 2012 (five suicides, 25 murders, and the rest from illness or old age). Hernandez's death raises questions about the quality of medical care not only at the FDC in Miami but also in the entire federal penal system. "The quality of care at the FDC is atrocious," says Marc Seitles, Hernandez's lawyer. "They essentially murdered her. They knew of her condition, they knew how badly she was suffering, and they did nothing."

Long before her August 2, 2011, arrest, Hernandez's life tracked the ups and downs of the American immigrant dream. She was born on December 15, 1970, in Santo Domingo. Her father, Hector Homero Hernandez Vargas, opposed the brutal reign of then-President Joaquín Balaguer. On the morning of September 22, 1971, Vargas was gunned down in front of his wife and child.

The Balaguer regime deported Peña Nadal and 9-month-old Keskea to Mexico. The two then moved to Chile, only to have the coup against Salvador Allende force them back to the Dominican Republic. Keskea studied tourism in Madrid before moving to Miami in 1994. She became a citizen, married, and in 1996 gave birth to a daughter, Giulianna Figueroa. "Keskea loved the United States," her mother says. "She believed in its laws."

But Hernandez would later break those laws. For a decade, she struggled to provide for her young daughter. She and her husband had divorced, and Keskea juggled jobs at Holiday Inn and a money transfer store before moving into sales. She eventually got her real estate agent's license and founded her own company, Kasa Mortgage, in 2004. She moved into a $500,000 house in Miramar and put her daughter in private school and gave her piano lessons.

Vivacious and charming, Hernandez proved adept at flipping Brickell apartments and Miami Beach condos for profit. But prosecutors would later show she used straw buyers and bogus documents to do it.

Hernandez's life began to crash at the same time as the housing market. By the time Bear Stearns went belly-up in 2008, she had already closed Kasa Mortgage. Hernandez had also caught wind of a federal investigation targeting her and 16 others for mortgage fraud. Stressed and unemployed, her health also began to fail. She had trouble eating and breathing. Some days, she could hardly get out of bed. In 2010, she was diagnosed with lupus and started receiving disability checks.

On August 2, 2011, the feds raided her Miramar house in the middle of the night. Hernandez was arrested, charged with 38 counts of fraud, and thrown into a frigid cell at the FDC. All but one of her codefendants were quickly released on bond but, bizarrely, Hernandez's attorney, Joel DeFabio, never requested a bond hearing. "We developed a plan to get her the minimum sentence possible," DeFabio says of the decision. "She was in agreement."

Inside the FDC, Hernandez's lupus devolved into a dangerous illness. She had learned to control the disorder through a careful diet but now had no choice but to eat the prison food (often expired and occasionally moldy, she told family members). She became feverish and wracked with pain. FDC clinical director Delvena Thomas, an Army psychiatrist who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, treated Hernandez with powerful steroids (a standard, short-term treatment for lupus).

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I have not read the New Times for many years until today. Last night, I happen to be in Ft. Lauderdale attending a live town hall meeting. As my friend and I were walking past a free newspaper stand, we both took a New Times. It wasn't until the following evening, that I was able to open it up, to start reading it. "Death Sentence" was the first reading. As I was reading the story about Keskea Hernandez, I began to think back just a couple weeks ago, about my commenting in the online newspaper, the Huffington Post, about something very similar, but it involved my opinion on the whole penal system, Federal, State, and County, where many inmates are not being properly diagnosed medically or mentally. So reading this story was not an accident, and some how it will all be brought together one day soon, to those who make decisions in Washington. My hope is that someone will make a documentary of these types of stories, and bring it all to the fore front where it can no longer be ignored, but have to be addressed because of a overwhelming need to do so, because of public pressure.

Just one more episode in the ever-expanding, shameful, embarrassing steps of Miami-Dade County returning to its banana republic heritage roots. Gotta love all these angry witch-hunters expressing their lack of sympathy here. Yeah, she obviously made some bad choices. Yeah she deserved to go to prison for it. Did she really deserve to die for it?

OH PLEASE!!! I think it is much sadder to let our senior citizens have to decide whether to take their medication or eat because they don't have money to do both...then to worry about a criminal's health...the seniors are in prison without bars...this woman gave up all her rights when she commited the crime...anyone who is in prison should only get the minimal to survive...no more...people in prison can get an education in prison, have access to a gym and workout everyday, they never have to pay for anything...Look at Martha Stewart...REALLY...I know that there are prisons for harden criminals but that's a whole other ballgame...she was a white/blue collar criminal which pretty much falls in the same catagory as Martha...I have NO SYMPATHY!!! If you can't do the time, you shouldn't do the crime!!!

I'm an RN who has worked in a state prison in anther state. This scenario of horrible medical care is exactly what I witnessed working there. Everyone's hands are tied including the nurses and doctors. Recommending further treatment and transfer to another facility equipped to care properly falls on deaf ears. All the medical workers can do is document care and efforts so that when there is a law suit, they will be protected.

Before I worked in a prison, I worked in intensive care. I had a 30 yr old prison patient who had a heart attack. His arrival to ICU however was delayed because everyone thought he was faking. The doctor at the prison said he had learned his lesson--to listen more carefully to the symptoms. Luckily, this young man survived.

There are many prisoners who'll conjure up symptoms to get out of work so their trips to the infirmary are so frequent that they taint the picture of those who really are sick. Combine that with physicians who are poorly trained, inadequent staff numbers, and lack of money and you have patients who die unnecessarily. And remember John Gotti, the Mafia leader, who died of cancer of the throat because of absessed teeth that were not treated by a dentist? It doesn't matter who you are. It's a sad commentary on our prison system.

My prayers go all to all those involved. This type of reckless disregard in the system should not, and will not continue as long as people write their local, and state representatives to voice their anger on this type of treatment. It is inhumane, and should not be condoned, or tolerated for any reason, and if any employee in the correctional system is currently treating any of the inmates like this should be fired, and brought up on charges that will stick.

@frankmcfrankenfrank There is something major that your missing here, and I will try my humanly best, to stay in the spiritual side of this, and not the ego. So here goes, everyone on this earth including you, have a time frame on this earth. And yes, one way or another you will leave this earth, but the point that your missing is this. Every soul on this earth, despite their miss deeds deserve to be respected, know matter what their plight in this life is. Do you really think, you or anyone on this earth has the right to mistreat someone because they are not acting according to your standards, of how you think they should act? I hope your answer is no. That you realize that if you were in jail, and you needed medical treatment that you would realize that know matter what you did, you still are entitled to get treatment, despite what your crime was. To love someone unconditionally no matter what, is a major problem on the earth.

@gregseth619@frankmcfrankenfrank Yes, you have little sympathy because it was not you. You have little sympathy because you have know emotions what so ever. So who hurt you so much, that you have become dead inside, where you don't have compassion, sympathy, nor empathy? Do you have even a soul at all in that shell of a body of yours? My prayers are more for you, than to this young lady who know longer has to suffer anymore, but for you, I believe there is hope for you.

The article is not defending the crimes that she committed with mortgage fraud. Its bringing attention to the lack of medical care to a human being that was not in prison for killing anyone and was really sick. She was dying and did not get the proper medical care despite her desperate and several pleas for help. Handcuffed to a bed? where was she going to go, she was already dead.

She was doing time for her crime and unfortunately she was not one of the lucky ones who got bonded out. Her death could have been prevented if only the "persons in charge" would have put aside their stupidity and ignorance.